Stopping Exploding Ferries of Wickedness

Suggested Reading: Proverbs 28:4-10

In the movie, The Dark Knight, there is an incredibly powerful scene involving a couple of ferries. The Joker has stranded two ferries out in the middle of the water and given the passengers of each ferry a detonator to blow up the other ferry, promising to blow them both up if no one has pushed the button by midnight. The Joker wants to prove that people are selfish and self centered but he also wants to use the ferries to distract Batman from coming after him and to throw the city into turmoil. Batman ignores the ferries, believing the people on those boats will choose to do the right thing, and focuses on taking down the Joker. The people on those boats do choose to do the right thing or, at least, not to do the wrong thing, and were a part of beating Joker at his own game.

There is a Proverb that speaks to that scene. Proverbs 28:4 says, To reject the law is to praise the wicked; to obey the law is to fight them (NLT). By simply doing the right thing, the people on those ferries were fighting back against the Joker, but that same dynamic can be seen throughout life. When people set up prejudicial rules that penalize people for existing, we can fight them by doing the right thing and refusing to treat people differently. When people seek to change the moral fabric of society by redefining right and wrong and painting those who disagree as bigots, we can fight them by living moral lives and loving those who would smear us. When people try to provoke us by stealing from us, cheating us, or lying about us, we can fight them and prove them wrong by refusing to stoop to their level, by continuing to live lives of faith and righteousness.

When the wicked seem to win, it can be tempting to "fight fire with fire," but the nature of the fight means we can't win that way. Just as darkness can only be banished by turning on the light, wickedness can only be fought with righteous living. If someone has been attacking you or your family, don't give in to the temptation to fight them back on the same terms. Do the right thing. Fighting like the wicked only validates them, but righteous living will ultimately defeat them.

Being a Redheaded Christian

Suggested Reading: John 13:31-38

If you ever see me or my wife in public with our kids it is impossible to not know who our children belong to. Both of the kids have the same bright red hair as my wife and the same facial structure that runs on my side of the family. Even if they wanted to, my children could not deny who they belong to. When we go out to eat with large groups, it is very easy for our waiter or waitress to know exactly who belongs on our check.

In a similar way, the people we interact with should experience the same kind of certainty that we belong to Jesus. But how, exactly, does that work? It's not as if people can look at us, like they look at my children, and notice the physical resemblance. So what is it that people can see that lets them know we belong to Jesus. I'm sure we could come up with lists of things: compassion, caring for the poor, righteous living, honesty, integrity, loving our neighbor as ourselves. All of those things are important, of course, and we should be characterized by those things. But none of them are the thing that causes people to recognize our affiliation with Jesus when they see them.

In John 13, immediately after Jesus' last supper with the disciples before his crucifixion and after Judas had left to betray him, Jesus told the disciples, "I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another" (John 13:34-35, HCSB). According to Jesus' words here, there are two important things necessary for people to recognize that we belong to Jesus. First, they must see us, as believers, loving one another. Of all the things that we can do, Jesus pointed to this one thing as the primary marker that would let everyone know we belong to him. Not being loving in general. Not even loving our neighbors as ourselves. Not being non-judgmental. But loving each other - our fellow believers. Is it any wonder that the world doesn't believe we belong to a resurrected Lord when we are often better known for fighting each other and arguing with each other than for loving each other?

But the second thing Jesus's words require if people are to recognize that we belong to him is that people must see us together. We cannot be seen to love each other if we are not seen with each other. More than that, we cannot be seen to love each other if we are not seen to love being with each other. Do you really believe that people love each other when they never want to be around each other?  Is it even possible to love someone if you are never together? At least in a biblical, unconditional, love-is-a-choice-not-just-a-feeling kind of way?

Do you want to convince the people in your school or office or neighborhood that Jesus is real and that you belong to him? Let them see you with other believers, actively loving each other the way that Jesus loved us. By this all people will know  that we belong to him.

Getting Closer to God by Defying Conventional Thinking

Suggested Reading; Job 21:7-21

Several years ago, I watched a movie called Something the Lord Made. The movie chronicled the journey of a pair of men as they researched the possibility of doing open heart surgery and eventually became the first people to complete the procedure successfully. One of the reasons their work was so groundbreaking was that the accepted thinking of the day said that the heart couldn't be touched. No one believed that surgery could be performed on the heart without the death of the patient. But these two men, together, decided to challenge the accepted thinking of the day and look past it toward reality. Only then were they able to accomplish the impossible.

Job was also a man who was willing to challenge the accepted wisdom of the day. The wise men of the day believed that people who lived righteous lives were always blessed while those who lived sinful lives always received God's wrath. When Job received the "wrath" of God, he began to re-examine the thinking of the day. Knowing that he was on the receiving end of some pretty heavy wrath when he had done nothing wrong, Job began reexamining those accepted notions: In Job 21:17-18, Job said,“Yet the light of the wicked never seems to be extinguished. Do they ever have trouble? Does God distribute sorrows to them in anger? Are they driven before the wind like straw? Are they carried away by the storm like chaff? Not at all!" (NLT). Because Job was willing to challenge the accepted thinking of the day, Job was able to see things more clearly than his friends. Job faced some hard truths and then came out stronger in the long-run for it.

Far too often we simply accept what the people around us say is the truth without ever really examining it for ourselves. We accept what our parents say, what our teachers tell us, what our consensus of friends says to us. But man's wisdom is not the same thing as God's wisdom. What seems to make a lot of sense from a human perspective may be the attempts of our desperately feeble minds to make sense of something that we can't find reason for. That journey for meaning is a good one, but we have to remember that things will make a lot more sense if we look at reality and not just what other people say.

The accepted thinking of the day is often the rejected thinking of another generation. Whatever is accepted, examine it in the light of reality. We learn more when we challenge than when we simply accept.